MAUSEFALLE

MAUSEFALLE

Mousetrap

Prologue: With Josef Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, an epic struggle for the control and future of the Soviet Union commenced. Four major players emerged very quickly: Stalin's presumed successor, Central Party Secretary Georgy Malenkov; the hardline Stalinist, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov; The ruthless head of the MVD Internal Affairs and MGB State Security, Lavrentiy Beria, and the respected, but displaced, Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. These were hard men shaped by the Revolution and the Great Patriotic War, each with a different vision of the future. They quietly fought for Chairmanship of the Party and near absolute power. On the heels of 25 million war dead, and more killed in purges, the Soviet Union was a place of uncertainty and terror. Fear of a military coup, or even another civil war, this time between the Army and the State Security Forces ran through the country.

In such dangerous times, even a mouse may tip the balance.

Die Maus im Labyrinth

The Mouse in the Maze

Ankara: 23 April 1953

"There were no heroes at Stalingrad. Only survivors and the dead."

The chill silence of a graveyard settled instantaneously over the room, the fine white tablecloths suddenly resembling nothing so much as burial shrouds, covering unnamed corpses in the stark cruel cold of winter.

The Russian was nearly perfect, but the accent was very German; the voice, even and firm, never wavered. The interpreter stood motionless, completely unsure what to do. I saw the Embassy Political Attaché freeze with his mouth open, like some kind of bizarre fish. He'd proposed the toast as an honor to me, one of the few female Heroes of the Soviet Union, and he was completely unprepared for the German's response. He was absolutely stricken, terrified to make eye contact with me. Useless, like all political officers. I'd even seen that exact stunned expression before.

Stalingrad: 28 December 1942

I staggered past the masses of soldiers in their dull yellow-brown uniforms, mostly sitting on the cold concrete of the factory floor with their squads, listening intently, or at least pretending to listen intently to the "Zampolit," the Political Officer responsible for the morale and revolutionary purity of the soldiers of the unit. At first, none of them noticed me, especially Zampolit Pavov, who was so entranced with the sound of his own voice, at his own pointless yammering, that even when soldiers began to turn away from him to watch me, he didn't notice.

It wasn't until I stepped into the cleared area around him that he really noticed me. I must have looked like hell. My shredded and burned uniform, the flash burns on my face, the singed hair half-gone, and the ball of gory rags I was holding against my stomach seemed to render him speechless.

He fought to recover from his shock with his usual tactic, mockery. "Tovarishch Kornilova, returned to seek shelter so soon? If you've even managed to kill two of Hitler's soldiers, bring back two tags, I'll personally put you in for a medal."

I began to laugh. The pain and emotion of the eternity I'd spent in this hell finally breaking through. The laugh was disturbing, even to me, and I felt like it was never going to stop. I took eternities to get it under control, then I reached into my coat pocket and began dropping German identity tags in front of him. Fifty-three tags clinked like leaden bells as they hit the ground. I had one more, still on its chain around my neck and I lifted it up. "Then you can put me in for twenty-six medals, Tovarishch. There were more, many more, but some of them were bad soldiers; they weren't wearing their tags. Maybe you want me to go kill another to make it twenty-seven medals?" I unslung and dropped Papasha, "Papa," on the ground in front of him; there were three bullet holes in the receiver of the submachine gun and the barrel sleeve was half crushed. The drum magazine fell loose and rolled a few inches in a wobbling drunkard's path, like a child's toy, before falling over. "I will need a new weapon, though." The laughter came back dark and vicious, twisting around me in spinning madness. I unwrapped the blood-soaked rags from my right arm and held up my mangled hand. "And if I could get a new hand, it would make it much, much simpler."